

\ 








lt } I /'WmTiLijna 

The Purple Rim 


And Six Other Tales for 
. . . Summer Reading . . . 



Published by the BROOKLYN DAILY 
EAGLE, at the Corner of Washington and 
Johnson Streets, Brooklyn, 1896 


THIS BOOK IS VOLUME 
ELEVEN, NUMBER 
THREE OF THE BROOK- 
LYN DAILY EAGLE 
LIBRARY FOR' JUNE, 
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
AND NINETY-SIX, AND 
IT HAS BEEN ENTERED 
AT THE POST OFFICE AT 
BROOKLYN FOR TRANS- 
MISSION THROUGH THE 
MAILS AS SECOND- 
CLASS MATTER. PRICE, 
FIVE CENTS. 



List of Tales. 


Page 

The Purple Rim 5 

HAMILTON ORMSBEE 

For Seven Days a Tramp - - 28 

J. SHIELDS STEWART 

A Scorch with a Phantom - 33 

CHAUNCEY C. BRAINERD 

My Friend Descalle - - - - 37 

EDWIN N. ROCKWELL 

In Camp Cedar Clove - - - 44 

justin McCarthy, Jr. 

The Hills of Tennessee - - 49 

WILLIAM L. LOCKWOOD 

Interruption in Idleness - 56 

GEORGE WILLIAM DOUGLAS 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


WHITHER? 

OBODY understood it. It was a busy 
day in the bureau when, by all the 
precedents, it ought to have been 
dull. Mondays are always busy 
there, nobody expects quite full 
time for luncheon cn that day and in- 
quirers frequently swarm the place through 
the middle of the week. But this was Satur- 
day afternoon, it was only June 1, and the 
Summer Resort edition of the paper had not 
yet been issued, yet here were people crowd- 
ing a*bout the tables studying hotel circulars 
and time tables as though all Brooklyn was 
bent on getting into the country before night- 
fall. 

The heat had something to do with it. 
The city had scorched all the week, and this 
afternoon would have been stifling in the bu- 
reau if it had not been for a Sandy Hook 
breeze which blew over the city and carromed 
down into the open windows from the post 
office tower. 

A fat woman in a sailor hat, whose sleeves 
had been crushed into strings in one of the 
big stores, steamed in at the open door, 
caught up an excursion placard from the 
stock of time tables, and dropping into the 
nearest rocking chair, murmured, “Well, 
this is cool, anyhow. Most makes one feel 
like the country, cornin’ in here.” 

“Would you not l'ike a glass of ice water, 
madam?” asked a lynx eyed clerk stepping 
to the cooler and drawing one for her. 
Jones was looking for a raise before the 
summer season closed and he didn’t propose 
to lose any tricks. 

“Well, that is refreshing,” the woman said, 
handing back the clouded glass. “’Spose 
you’ve got any boardin’ houses on your list 
where they’re as polite as you be?” 

“Hundreds of them, madam,” returned the 
dauntless Jones. “Where do you think you 



6 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


would like to go, to the seashore or the 
mountains?” 

“Well, I don’t know exactly. I reckon 
first I’ll go over where some of this breeze 
comes from,” and the woman transferred 
herself and her improvised fan to a chair 
opposite the dark haired girl at the type- 
writer by the open window. “You see, I’ve 
got to have half rates for three of the chil- 
dren, and I hope they won’t object to dogs. 
I can’t stand mosquitoes myself, they pois- 
on me so, and it must be a farm house, where 
I won’t have to dress up the young ones in 
the afternoon, and there ought to be ex- 
cursion rates so he can come out for Sun 
day—” 

The bureau had gradually become interested 
in this unusual list of requirements, but at 
this point of the recital there was a diversion 
which left only Jones and the dark haired 
typewriter to learn the rest of the fat woman’s 
must-haves. 

The diversion was a girl. A girl “divinely tall 
and most divinely fair” after an English 
model which it would have been almost im- 
possible to match in this country when Tenny- 
son wrote his famous lines. She carried her- 
self lithely as though she played tennis and 
golf. Her head was well poised and of such 
good proportions that it was not disfigured 
by the stiff sailor hat which she wore. Her 
cheeks were flushed and from beneath the 
dark hat there escaped crinkly locks of 
brilliant sunshiny hair, which curled ten- 
derly about the nape of her neck. 

The dark eyed young man stepped from the 
inner room to receive the commands of this 
radiant being, but the superintendent him- 
self was before his prompt assistant. 

“Are you looking for information about 
summer resorts?” he asked, as he led the 
way into the inner room, where there were 
more easy chairs than in the regular office, 
and where the walls glistened with handsome- 
ly framed photographs of hotels, cottages and 
much of the star scenery of this great coun- 
try. 

“Yes, I suppose so,” replied this goddess 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


7 


of the golden hair. “And yet it isn’t a re- 
sort, exactly, that I want.” 

She was a very calm young person and 
looking at her striped dress of pale green 
and cream color, with its floating ends of 
spotless green ribhon, one forgot that the 
thermometer said 92. Yet calm as she was 
she seemed to And some trouble in expressing 
her wishes for the summer. She paused about 
as long as the reader has been hindered in 
this narrative and there was a slight ad- 
ditional flush on her richly tinted but slightly 
freckled cheeks before she looked straight in 
the superintendent’s face and explained: 

“I am tired of crowds. I’ve danced and 
played tennis and ridden and driven every 
summer for ever so long” (she looked about 
19 while she made this far reaching state- 
ment), “and it makes the summer just like 
the winter. Now I can drive and row and fish 
and bait my own hook, too, and ride; I love 
to sketch by myself, and I’m sure it would 
be a blessing to my mother to get into a farm 
house where she could wear her morning 
gown all day and doze in a hammock while 
I explored the neighborhood. Is the wilder- 
ness represented in your bureau?” 

“Certainly, mad — ” the superintendent 
stumbled over the conventional phrase. She 
radiated girlhood so gloriously that madam 
was absurd, and he couldn’t bring himself 
to use miss. 

“How about the Adirondaeks?” he asked 
at a venture. 

“And dress for dinner at Paul Smith’s or 
the Ampersand? That isn’t my idea of a 
wilderness, and if I hunted up a hamlet I 
should run across camping parties with men 
whom I know. Men would spoil it all.” 

“Right this way, please, gentlemen. I am 
quite sure we shall find what you want.” 

It was the dark haired assistant who spoke 
and he conducted two young men, one in bi- 
cycle clothes, around to the other end of the 
table at which the superintendent and the 
girl were talking. The young men must have 
heard her last sentences, and it was fine to 


8 


THE PURPLE RIM. 

see the perfect unconsciousness with which 
the girl continued her questioning. 

“Haven’t you any farm houses to recom- 
mend? Of course I don’t mean Berkshire or 
Adirondack farm houses.” 

“Vermont is filled with farm houses,” the 
superintendent replied, “and you would find 
the driving there everything you cou'ld ask 
for yourself and your mother. But about the 
rowing I don’t know. I don’t suppose many 
of those mountain streams stand still long 
enough to hold boats.” 

“That sounds interesting, and I’ve never 
been in Vermont. But I’ve always heard 
that there were beautiful li'ttle lakes there. 
Aren’t there farm houses near some of 
those?” 

“Here are some fine rooms at Atlantic 
City,” suggested Brown, the assistant to the 
two young men. One of these was big and 
blonde and athletic and looked as if he would 
be capable of going to a summer dance in his 
bicycle clothes. The other was slighter, 
though he was tall and had a large frame, 
which only needed the filing out of maturity 
to be handsome. His face was rather thin 
and framed in dark hair, with a tendency 
to curl as soon as it got long enough. He 
looked something like our ideal of poets, and 
a romantic girl might have called him Ham- 
let. 

“Large double room, sea exposure, table 
said to be excellent and very reasonable 
rates,” continued the assiduous Brown. 

“Atlantic City, and the bathing and the 
board walk and the dances and the girls,” 
commented the bicycle youth. “It’ll be 
fun. Let’s try it for a couple of weeks. What 
do you say, Bob?” 

Bob frowned. He was watching the girl 
across the room and he had seen her nose 
contract at his friend’s speech. “I don’t 
want it, Bennett,” he replied, shortly. “I 
never cared much for those Jersey caravans, 
and I’m tired of the sort of thing one gets 
into there.” 

Bennett looked thunderstruck and Bob 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


9 


continued more mildly: “I told you I didn’t 
think we could hit it off together this sum- 
mer. I want a real sea voyage, not just a 
day’s run on fishing boats, and I don’t feel 
like running into a crowd.” 

Bennett drew himself up with dignity. “Oh, 
very well. Ford. As you please. I’m going 
to have some fun, and a voyage alone with 
you isn’t exactly my idea of hilarity.” 

“She knows my name now, anyhow,” 
thought the wily Ford. “I wish I was as 
well informed.” 

“Here are the pictures I was looking for,” 
broke in the urhane manager. “Lake St. 
Catharine, Lake Bomoseen and Hyde’s Man- 
or, Vermont. I believe they are all in driv- 
ing distance of each other.” 

“These are charming.” the girl said, turn- 
ing over some views of Lake Bomoseen. 
“But I see this is a hotel circular. Do they” 
— dropping her voice, “do they ‘hop’ at 
this hotel?” 

“I believe they do,” replied the manager, 
smiling, “but one needn’t hop unless one 
wishes, and there are smaller houses in the 
neighborhood where I imagine they never 
hear a fiddle from June to November.” 

“That promises well. I will take the ad- 
dresses of all these places,” producing from 
her pocket a note book large enough to be of 
some service. “I am very much obliged for 
your kindness,” and when she had written her 
addresses and bestowed a bow and a smile on 
the office in general rather than upon the 
superintendent as an individual, the girl went 
out. 

“Pardon me,” said Ford walking over to 
the superintendent with a smile that trans- 
formed his rather lifeless face. “But wasn’t 
that young lady Miss Bergen of Flatbush? 1 
have met her once but she did not see me 
distinctly enough to recognize me to-day.” 

“Really,” the manager replied, “I never 
saw the young lady before, and she didn’t 
leave her address.” 

In fact the manager had the card of the 
girl’s mother, and intended to send to her all 


10 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


the circulars he received about Vermont cot- 
tages before July 1, but he was too* wise a 
man to betray the personal affairs of his 
patrons. 

“O, it’s of no consequence. I merely thought 
I recognized her face,” and Ford engrossed 
himself in some circulars of the Yarmouth and 
Old Dominion steamship lines. 

“I don’t see what interests you in that big 
girl,” Bennett commented as he jotted down 
addresses. “She isn’t nearly so pretty as the 
dark haired little girl in the other room.” 

“No, I don’t suppose she is,” Ford re- 
plied easily. “But I don’t care for that par- 
ticular style of beauty. Beside, I think I 
know this girl.” 

“Think you will know her you mean,” 
Bennett retorted. “I want to get some cir- 
culars from the other room and then I am 
ready.” 

He rattled around for some minutes in the 
front office, but the girl at the typewriter was 
busy and never became aware of his presence. 
Half past five had come, the bureau was 
closing and Bennett had to retreat in the 
wake of the fat woman, who bore an armful 
of circulars, pictures and memoranda prepared 
for her by the devoted Jones. 


II. WHETHER? 

It was August 1 and Robert E. Ford sat in the 
spacious Windsor at Montreal writing. He 
was much more bronzed than when he had 
been searching for facts in the information 
bureau. Hands and face were colored like a 
sailor’s and the high collar and four in hand 
tie looked out of place next the copper skin. 
In fact, Ford had only returned to the garb of 
civilization that morning and still longed for 
the flannel shirt and loose, high boots in 
which he had tramped through the fishing vil- 
lages of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Prince 
Edward’s island. A glance over his shoulder 
as he writes will give some idea of his sum- 
mer. The letter was to his sister and ran: 

Dear Alice — I give it up. I have roamed 
up and down Nova Scotia, Prince Edward’s 


11 


THE PURPLE RIM. 

Island and Cape Breton for six weeks. J 
have devoured my Parkman and Longfellow 
and I haven’t got a single idea that’s any use 
to me. The blue noses and red feet are the 
most hospitable, gentle, kindly people in the 
world, but they live as though the clock had 
been set back a hundred years for the most 
part. I don’t sympathize with them and 
haven’t been able to think out even a short 
story, let alone my hoped for play. 

But meanwhile I have gained ten pounds 
and am in what Bennett would call the pink 
of condition. Such sleep! Such mutton, such 
fish, cooked alive almost, and such Cape Breton 
oysters you never tasted. But they are not 
brain food for me and so here I am after a sail 
from Charlotte to Quebec and then up this 
noblest river. It wasn’t quite so fine as the 
superb trip from Boston to Yarmouth, but 
Quebec is more inspiriting than Halifax. And 
for me this city is better than either. I can 
already hear the wheels of my men- 
tal machinery begin to creak and 
groan preparatory to turning out more copy. 
I fell in with a queer old spiritualistic medi- 
um to-day and my longing to write grew on 
me at once. He is undoubtedly a crank, pos- 
sibly an impostor, but he is American. I 
understand his mental processes and he 
would be a superb figure for a story. He has 
been telling me about a spiritualist camp 
meeting on the shores of Lake Champlain 
and v/ants me to stop off with him. I think 
I’ll go. I might pick up the rest of my story 
there and there are a lot of Vermont summer 
places I think might offer good material — Lake 
St. Catherine, Lake Bomoseen, Hyde’s Man- 
or; did you ever know anybody that went to 
them or had put them into stories? 

Hullo, I see my ambassador from the spirit 
world across the room and I must stop and 
talk to him. Expect me when you see me and 
when I know of even a temporary abiding 
place I will send you an address. 

With love to mother, the colonel and your- 
self, ever your own BOB. 

No sooner had Ford addressed this letter 
than a lanky individual rose, crossed the 
room and paused in front of him. The strang- 
er had a soda biscuit complexion with an 
Abraham Lincoln sort of figure about which 
a suit of shiny black draped itself in wrin- 
kles and creases. He did not remove his soft, 
wide brimmed black hat, from beneath which 
thick straight black locks fell to his coat 


12 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


collar. He would have looked like a rural 
minister if it had not been for his hair and his 
shrewd face, which might have belonged to 
a patent medicine peddler or a traveling clair- 
voyant. 

“Good evening, Mr. Parsons,” Ford said, 
cordially. “Sit down,” and he pushed about 
one of the leather covered chairs with his foot 
in a negligent way which seemed to his 
caller highly improper, as if a stranger should 
dance on the golden streets of the New Je- 
rusalem. “I want to ask you more about 
Vermont. I have pretty nearly made up my 
mind to run down among the Green moun- 
tains with you.” 

“I conceited you would come to the camp,” 
his companion replied, slowly. “You look 
like one that might have eyes for the visions 
of another world.” 

Ford laughed. “I’m afraid my visions have 
been mostly of this world. However, I like 
my kind and if a man has anything to tell 
me I’m glad to listen.” 

“That’s the receptive spirit and receptivi- 
ty is the beginning of faith,” commented Par- 
sons glibly. “The worst fools are them that 
think they know all there is and a leetle over. 
Now at the camp — ” 

Ford interrupted. “But, my friend, you 
told me a good deal about the camp out on 
the mountain. If you raise my expectations 
too high I shall be disappointed and your serv- 
ices will fail of their proper effect. Better 
let them break on me unprepared. There are 
other places in Vermont I want to find after 
I leave your park. Do you know about Lake 
Bomoseen?” 

“I have camped there once,” Parsons re- 
plied: “Castleton pond we called it in them 
days and we talked about makin’ it a meetin’ 
ground. I beat that plan because the moun- 
tains there ain’t high enough. I wanted it 
carried to Silver lake, on the very top of the 
Green mountain range, but they said it wa’nt 
accessible enough and went and pitched us 
down on the shores of Lake Champlain, 


THE PXJRPLE RIM. 13 

where all the mountains we see are most 
twenty miles away. Did you ever notice that 
the spirits work best in the mountains? High 
peaks kind o’ open folks’ minds to the uni- 
versal, and they listen in a humble spirit. Some 
of the greatest manifestations have come in 
the mountains. The Eddys had most power- 
ful materializations in Chittenden, where folks 
druv for miles amongst the mountains in 
the night to the see auntses. But down to 
Worcester they want nothin’.” 

“Then Lake Bomoseen is in a flat country?” 
Ford persisted. 

“Land, no; there ain’t nothin’ flat in Ver- 
mont, except the ponds themselves. But the 
hills is what we’d call rollin’. Worse’n that, 
it’s becomim’ a fashionable resort.” 

“Are there large hotels?” 

“Well, not like this,” and Parsons’ eyes 
wandered admiringly down the long corridor. 
“But there’s hotels and cottages, an’ 
city folks that go drivin’ an’ rowin’ 
an’ fishin’ an’ tennisin’. All them things is 
death to the sperit. Of course,” and a shrewd, 
hard gleam came into the black eyes and the 
lips drew tensely over the irregular teeth, 
“when you’re hard up a drawin’ room see 
aunts is sometimes a necessity. A hotel ma- 
terialization pans out well, but it’s mighty 
uncertain. There’s liable to be young fellers 
with a worldly sperit and dark lanterns. They 
always claim to see things an’ what they say 
they see other folks say too, jest like sheep. 
My friend, did you ever think” — and Parsons 
brought down his hand with a convincing 
stroke on Ford’s knee — “how many folks 
would rather believe the world was paved with 
cobble stones than with manna and milk an’ 
honey if they had their free choice?” 

‘‘And is Hyde’s manor paved with cobble 
stones?” Ford asked. 

“Pretty much, I reckon,” and the prophet 
look in Parsons’ face relaxed into a smile. 
“That is, it’s in Sudbury, which is high an’ 
mighty rocky an’ so far forth favorable to the 
spirits. But I understand that’s fashionabler 
than the other one. I hain’t never been there, 


14 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


but I’ve heard tell of four horse teams a ca- 
vortin’ over them htll roads with folks a sing- 
in’ an’ carryin’ on as if it was circus day all 
summer long.” 

‘‘And Lake St. Catharine?” suggested Ford, 
the interest in his voice increasing. 

Parsons turned and looked at his questioner 
intently, the gaunt lines of his face slowly 
softening into a quizzical, kindly smile. Then 
he leaned over, dropped his crab like band on 
Ford’s shoulder and said, lowering his voice 
beyond any chance of being overheard: “My 
young friend, you couldn’t be curiouser if you 
was courtin’ a gal down in that country and 
wanted to git the lay of the land ’fore ye went 
visitin’ her.” 

Ford sprang up and reddened through his 
bronzed skin and six weeks’ beard. 

“I didn’t intend no offense, mister.” Parsons 
added In a conciliatory tone. “I was jest mak- 
in’ the kind o’ joke that comes nateral talkin’ 
to a man of your age, and I hope — ” 

Ford had regained his self possession by 
that time. He had not associated with the 
frank but kindly Cape Breton fishermen for 
nothing. He held out his hand cordially, say- 
ing: “No offense was intended and there is 
no offense. Unfortunately I have no girl 
anywhere whom I’ve a right to court. But 
it’s getting late, and if we catch that early 
train for Queen City park we had better turn 
in. I have been going to bed with the sun for 
a month and am almost a normal animal in 
my habits. Good night.” 


III. WHY? 

July went quietly along the shores of 
Lake Bomoseen. Barbara Appleton and her 
mother had arrived on the first of the month, 
found rooms in one of the small cottages and 
settled down for a quiet summer. Barbara 
was not usually the head of the family, but 
she had begged to plan this vacation so 
earnestly that Mrs. Appleton had consented, 
at first with the amused tolerance of the pa- 
rent whose child tries to manage the affairs 
of maturity for the first time, and later, 


15 


THE PURPLE RIM. 

with a genuine, restful delight in the sense 
of being taken care of which she had not 
known since her babies were little. So Bar- 
bara had selected rooms in a small cottage 
which commanded Bird mountain with only 
a glimpse of the lake, had hired for the sea- 
son a good road horse, a covered buggy with 
easy springs for her mother’s back, a well 
balanced rowboat and had pre-empted the 
ground about one spreading rock maple on 
the shores of the lake with a series of stakes 
so that she could swing her mother’s ham- 
mock in the shade at any hour in the day. 

“Now,” the young autocrat declared, “you 
are to vegetate all summer and let me take 
care of you. You are not to write a single 
note; only letters to father and Frank and 
Helen. You are to take your daily drive and 
your afternoon nap and a row out on the lake 
for fine sunsets, and if I don’t take you back 
to papa with plumper cheeks and fewer wrin- 
to papa with plumper cheeks and fewer wrin- 
kles since you have undertaKen to chaperone 
us girls every time we want to go out and 
will insist on getting up for papa’s early 
breakfast — it will be because you are un- 
grateful and will not mind your doctor. De- 
vitalize yourself, mamma; that’s what Mrs. 
Stebbins is always telling us. I have learned 
how and look at me. I can row from Hyde- 
ville up to this end of the lake without being 
tired.” 

For a time Barbara disdained the guests 
at the hotels. She told her mother that she 
knew people enough in Brooklyn and unless 
some of her friends came up she didn’t pro- 
pose to be bothered with acquaintances. She 
found the resolution hard to keep. Youth is 
gregarious, Barbara ran across other girls 
everywhere and it was difficult to resist their 
friendly advances. Particularly hard to re- 
sist was Kitty Matthews, a warm hearted 
little chatterbox from Brooklyn, who event- 
ually had her own way with everybody she 
took a fancy to. Kitty pulled up a little 
boat at the landing, was duly presented to 
Mrs. Appleton and chattered like a magpie 


16 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


while Barbara sketched. On one of these 
visits she brought over an armful of maga- 
zines and dropped them at Barbara’s feet, 
saying: “Perhaps you haven’t seen the Au- 
gust numbers yet. There are several short 
stories and I brought them along as a com- 
pensation for boring you so much. But it’s 
deadly stupid over at the hotel to-day.’’ 

“I didn’t suppose it was ever stupid there. 
There are so many of you, you must be gay.” 

“O, there were the usual driving parties to- 
day, but I’ve seen all the points of interest 
twice over; the right men have gone with 
the wrong girls; there are sure to be what 
my little brother calls ‘scraps’ before they 
get home, and if you will extend the hospi- 
tality of your tree I would rather read or 
talk.” 

“Very glad to see you and not indif- 
ferent to the magazines,” Barbara said. 
She was turning over the magazines and 
handing one to her mother, she added: 
“Here’s a story that looks as if it might be 
good. It’s by Robert Ellsworth Ford and I’ve 
read things of his that were amusing.” 

“O Bob Ford,” chimed in Kittie. “I know 
him. He lives in Brooklyn. I wonder you’ve 
never met him. He is a great friend of a 
friend of mine, Dick Bennett.” 

“We don’t know many literary people,” 
Mrs. Appleton interposed, blandly. “Is Mr. 
Ford as entertaining as his stories?” 

“Entertaining!” and Kitty laughed joyous- 
ly. “I’m afraid you’ll be shocked, Mrs. Ap- 
pleton, but he’s what Dick calls a chump. 
No other word does justice to his stiffness 
and solemnity, and I wonder Dick ha3 kept 
in with him so long as he has.” 

Mrs. Appleton was beginning to turn the 
pages of the “chump’s” story with an amused 
smile and Kitty finished her recital to Bar- 
bara, swinging her camp chair about out of 
earshot. 

“No, I can’t understand what Dick sees in 
him. Dick’s as lively as they make them.” 

“Mr. Ford’s stories don’t read as if he 
were stupid,” Barbara suggested. 

“No, and I can’t see where he gets the 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


17 


bright conversations. I’ve met him out with 
a party of young people, where he didn’t say 
a bright thing all day long, and he would sit 
mooning and hardly speak for half an hour 
at a time. Ugh! he gave me a feeling as 
if I was being made material of and it 
fairly froze up my tongue, which you can 
imagine isn’t an easy matter. Now, if Dick 
wrote all those funny speeches, I could un- 
derstand it. He’s just as witty as he can be, 
but,” dropping her voice so that her words 
might not reach Mrs. Appleton, “he’s an 
awful flirt. So long as you understand him 
it’s all right, but I pity a girl who should 
believe half his nonsense. You know,” sage- 
ly, as if with the experience of a matron of 
50, “there are men who flirt just for the love 
of flirting and not at all for the love of the 
girl. Well, Dick’s that sort.” 

Barbara smiled. “You seem rather cheer- 
ful under Mr. — Mr. Dick’s evil propensities.” 

“Oh, I know how to fix him,” Kitty declared 
triumphantly. “Why one evening I went bik- 
ing with him up to the park, not tandem, you 
know. We each had our own wheel and we 
didn’t stop even for a plate of ice cream, 
and you would have thought from all the 
spoony things that fellow said that he’d been 
in love with me for ever and meant to pro- 
pose when he got a convenient chance. Well, 
two nights later I went to a Poly class day 
dance and if you’ll believe it Dick Bennett 
had gone there with another girl.” 

“The wretch.,” murmured Barbara. 

“Oh, well, I got even with him. I was nice — ” 
Kitty’s mouth curled into a demure smile 
here — “to one of the juniors. He was awfully 
young, and, oh, so fresh! Really a girt of 15 
could have had fun with him. At first Dick 
didn’t notice. Then he began to look sur- 
prised and that junior showed so plainly 
that he was having a heavenly time that 
Dick paid more attention to him than he did 
to his own girl. He was perfectly misera- 
ble and it served him right.” 

“I hope he atoned for his sins soon,” Bar- 
bara said. 


18 


THE PURPLE RJM. 


“Well you see,” with regretful tone, “it 
was just before we came up here. The night 
that Dick came to say goodby the parlors 
were crowded, and he couldn’t do more than 
squeeze my hand when he said good night. 
Now that horrid junior is up here. He went 
on the drive to-day and wanted me to go. 
Of course I wouldn’t, but Dick’s vacation i3 
two weeks off. and nobody knows how many 
girls he’s seen since I left. Oh, dear, it’s 
just horrid,” and the sprightly Kitty brushed 
away as many tears as she ever allowed her- 
self to shed. 

Barbara did not feel at ease under this 
load of confidences. The light hearted flirta- 
tion of Dick and Kitty seemed strange to 
her, and if she had been interested in a 
man to any such extent as Kitty seemed to 
be she would as soon have said her prayers on 
Fulton street as chatter about him. As she 
was thinking what she had better say Kitty 
sprang up exclaiming: 

“O, Barbara, you’ll excuse my calling you 
Barbara, won’t you, Miss Appleton, but 
there’s a team driving down to the Prospect 
house from the north. It must be from 
Hyde’s Manor, judging by the style. They 
say there’s an awfully swell set up there. 
There are trur.ks, and it must have guests 
coming to our hotel. Jump into my boat 
and row down with me, that’s a good girl. 
It isn’t hot on the water now. There may be 
someone in the party whom we know, and 
anyway I can take you up to my room and 
show you Dick’s photograph. He’s awfully 
handsome.” 

Barbara hesitated and the impulsive Kitty 
turned to her mother: “O, Mrs. Appleton, 
I want Barbara to row down to the Pros- 
pect. You won’t mind being left alone for 
a little, will you?” 

Mrs. Appleton shook herself loose from 
the last paragraph of Ford’s story and re- 
plied: “Why, certainly not, if Barbara wishes 
to go.” Then seeing the anxious look in 
Kitty’s face, she added: “You haven’t been 
rowing to-day, my dear. Perhaps it would 
do you good.” 


19 


THE PURPLE RIM. 

Half an hour later the two girls stood be- 
fore the desk of the Prospect house. Kitty 
asked for her letters with an ingratiating 
smile and ran her eye down the entries on 
the register. 

“New York, Albany, New York. Yes, 
here’s a Brooklyn. Yes, it is— why, Barbara, 
it is Bob Ford whom we’ve been talking 
about.” Then the animation died out of 
Kitty’s face and a disconsolate tone came 
into her voice as she added under her breath, 
“After all, it’s only that old stick. If it 
could only have been Dick Bennett.” 

Meanwhile a tall, dark haired young man 
was advancing toward them with a smile of 
recognition and a half extended hand. 


IV. WHEN? 

“Really, Miss Matthews, this is an unex- 
pected pleasure,” Ford exclaimed. 

“Delighted, I am sure,” murmured Kitty 
holding out her hand limply and swallowing 
the impulsive “Where’s Dick?” which she 
longed to utter. “We were just speaking 
of you,” she continued, “and of your story, 
‘The Other Fellow’ in the Overlook. It’s aw- 
fully bright.” 

“O, have they used that thing at last,” Ford 
exclaimed. “I am very glad if you like it. 
They’ve held it so long that I had begun to 
think they were repenting of their bargain. 
So it’s out. Any pictures?” 

During this little interlude Barbara had had 
a chance to recall that Ford was the young 
man she had met in the summer resort bureau. 
She had felt rather than seen that he admired 
her, but she was accustomed to admiration, 
and had not thought twice about it. Now she 
tried to recall what had been said about her 
coming here. Could it be? Of course it 
couldn’t. This w^as merely one of the summer 
accidents. 

Ford was trying bravely to keep his eyes 
fixed upon Kitty and to feign unconsciousness 
of any third person. But he did not succeed. 
Barbara’s presence tingled through his pulses 
and even while Kitty was telling about the 


20 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


pictures with his story his eyes would stray 
over her head to the taller girl. Kitty be- 
came conscious of this and turning she said, 
“Miss Appleton, may I present my friend Mr. 
Ford? We are all Brooklynites. Perhaps 
that is becoming vague as a basis of an 
acquaintance, but surely all the Brooklyn 
people at one Vermont lake ought to know- 
each other.” 

“I am happy to meet you Mr. Ford,” 
Barbara said. “I have enjoyed your stories 
very much, and I left my mother reading 
‘The Other Fellow’ half an hour ago.” How 
well he remembered that tranquil voice. It 
had an accent of interest to-day which he had 
not heard before, but it was the same rich, 
serene tone which had haunted his memory. 
How well it suited hej: face and the carriage 
of her head. While he w r as noting these 
things Ford tried to talk commonplaces in a 
commonplace tone. “I hope yeur mother will 
approve of the young man,” he said. “To be 
frank, he’s a favorite of mine, and I have 
been piqued that the editors have not present- 
ed him to the public earlier. But now that 
Gibson has drawn his portrait, all previous 
neglect is atoned for.” 

“Really? Don’t you sometimes get tired of 
the Gibson girl?” Barbara asked. “She seems 
rather monotonous.” 

“Never,” Ford said, warmly. “She is the 
iinest girl in America — on paper,” he added, 
smiling. 

Ford’s tone more than his words gave this 
speech a personal tinge, and Barbara had the 
unpleasant consciousness of having been made 
to seem fishing for a compliment. She turn- 
ed to Kitty. “I am afraid we must be going 
back, Miss Matthews.” 

Ford’s face fell. “Really, then you are not 
stopping here?” 

“O, I am,” Kitty struck in briskly. “You are 
not bereft of all your friends, Mr. Ford. 
But Miss Appleton is at a cottage a little 
further up the lake. I persuaded her to let 
me row her over. Our boat is right here at 
the wharf,” and Kitty moved toward the 
lawn. Her speech tacitly included Ford in 


21 


THE PURPLE RIM. 

the group and Barbara could not well say 
“Good afternoon,” as she had intended to do. 
So they walked down to the wharf chatting. 

“That’s my boat,” Kitty pointed out. 
“She’s not exactly a seaworthy looking craft, 
but we never have more than a ripple on 
these waters.” 

“She looks staunch enough so that I think 
I can safely offer my services as boatman,” 
Ford said. “My weight will hardly sink 
her.” 

“Thank you, but that is quite unneces- 
sary,” from Barbara. “Girls here become ac- 
customed to looking out for themselves and 
Kitty and I both like rowing.” 

Now, the chief article in Kitty’s social 
creed was to be fair, which she interpreted 
to mean keeping out of the way of other 
girls in the case of men whom she did not care 
for. So she added: “But if you don’t mind, 
Barbara, and if Mr. Ford would be good enough 
to bring my boat back, I believe I’ll stay 
here. The sun has come out dreadfully since 
we rowed up and although my complexion 
isn’t anything to speak of, I really think 
there is a little more of me left to burn up 
than there is of him,” and she looked at the 
bronzed face, laughing. 

“I became sun and wind proof in Nova 
Scotia,” Ford replied, “and this lake looks 
very tempting.” 

Barbara took her seat in the stern silently, 
fearing that her tone might betray her an- 
noyance. “Here I am,” she thought, “being 
rowed home by a man on a fifteen minutes’ 
acquaintance, just as if I were — were Kitty. 
I suppose he will think I am the flirtatious 
summer resort girl whom they put in the 
papers,” and Barbara sat very erect. 

But Ford did not seem to be thinking of any- 
thing except guiding his boat around the 
dock. When he struck into the straight lake 
the traces of eagerness which had at first 
marked his manner disappeared. He talked 
in the most matter of course wlay about the 
lake, the mountains and topics of the mo- 
ment. That was safe ground and Barbara 


22 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


realized that she had no reason to visit her 
annoyance on Ford, who had shown merely 
a matter of course courtesy. So in five min- 
utes they were chatting as casual acquaint- 
ances chat. Ford was entirely impersonal, 
yet the things he said were not commonplace, 
and Barbara felt bound to show that she was 
not a fool. 

“But Kitty said he was stupid,” she thought. 
"I suppose because he does not make jokes 
or personal remarks.” By the time the Apple- 
tons’ cottage was reached Barbara had heard 
various interesting things about the Eastern 
provinces and had been betrayed into enthusi- 
asm about the sunrises as seen from the Hub- 
bardton hills. Barbara’s enthusiasms were rare 
and proportionately charming, and Ford re- 
ceived her description so tactfully that she did 
not become self conscious after it. 

“Won’t you come up and meet my mother?” 
Barbara asked, as the boat touched the little 
landing. “I think she is still in her ham- 
mock, and we can have the pleasure of show- 
ing you Gibson’s pictures for your story.” 

With Mrs. Appleton “The Other Fellow” 
served as an introduction. Neither she nor 
Barbara felt that they were meeting a stran- 
ger. There was a good deal of Ford in his 
stories and they had seen several of them. So 
the talk ran on until the supper bell rang in 
the cottage. Then Ford pulled back to the ho- 
tel, Mrs. Appleton’s invitation to call treas- 
ured in the warmest corner of his memory. 
That night he lay for hours in a boat under 
the shadow of the island, watching the broad 
band of moonlight across the lake, like a sil- 
very bridge from Barbara’s cottage to his 
boat. He listened to the songs and laughter 
echoing over the water from dozens of boats, 
but he heard the music of one rich, restful 
voice and he saw brown eyes swept by dark 
lashes and a beautiful womanly face framed 
in hair of reddish gold. 

“Mr. Ford is very interesting,” Mrs. Apple- 
ton said, when they were alone. “But don’t 
you think his manner is just a little too de- 
voted? He doesn’t stare, certainly, but his 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


23 

eyes followed you about In a way which 
seemed peculiar for a casual acquaintance.” 

Barbara did not blush or drop her eyes, 
signs which Mrs. Appleton noted with approv- 
al. “I think, mamma, that Mr. Ford probably 
admires red headed girls.” 

“Oh, Barbara, how can you! You know 
your hair — ” 

“I know, mamma, that it is not red, but it 
certainly verges. And you know what he said 
about Gibson’s drawings, and I suppose I am 
a variant of the Gibson type. And, mamma, 
this isn’t the first time that Mr. Ford has seen 
me.” 

“What! you’ve met him in Brooklyn and 
you never — ” 

“I didn’t say that, mamma. But Mr. Ford 
was in the bureau on that day when I looked 
up this place. There was no meeting, but he 
has a rather striking face, you know, and I 
saw that he noticed me. I thought it one of 
the inevitable things for a girl with my hair, 
and should have thought no more about it, 
but—” 

“But what?” 

“Well, a week or two later we almost col- 
lided in the entrance to Abraham’s and I 
saw that he knew me.” 

“Barbara, this is rather serious. Mr. Ford 
learned at the bureau that you were coming 
here” — 

“But he couldn’t, mamma. I wasn’t com- 
ing then.” 

“But he got a clue or something, which he 
has followed. As soon as he reached here he 
rowed you home and sat talking half an 
hour, just as if you had expected him. He 
is an author and you can’t tell what romantic 
notions he may have.” 

“No, mamma, I don’t imagine that roman- 
tic notions will keep Mr. Ford awake. At 
best they would make material for another 
story, for which he would bless me. What 
little interest he has will evaporate. I won’t 
be in when he calls and that would check a 
man of fewer resources than Mr. Ford.” 

Barbara kept her word. At Ford’s first call 


24 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


she was fishing. At his second she and Mrs. 
Appleton were driving. Fate helped him at 
last, or more properly, he helped himself. 
Fate crowned his efforts, which is an oblig- 
ing way fate has for most of us. He learned 
that Miss Appleton rowed and fished, so he 
also rowed. He did not “haunt the lake,” 
because he was unwilling to give the impres- 
sion that he was following her. But on good 
fishing days Ford fished as though a rod had 
always been his best friend. 

One cloudy, misty day he went trolling for 
pike, trolling giving him more warrant for 
patroling the lake than rod fishing would do. 
As he rounded the point of the island he saw 
another boat with a slight figure wielding a 
light rod. It was Barbara and she was hav- 
ing good luck. Almost as Ford first saw her 
she landed a good sized perch and baited her 
hook like a practiced fisherman. She did not 
see him and while he was admiring her supple 
figure a gamey little bass took the hook and 
ran out the line, jumping viciously. Ford 
balanced his oars and watched the contest. She 
played the fish skilfully and finally landed 
him with a deft stroke of her net. Ford’s 
pulses were tingling with sympathy and after 
she threw her line again he stole softly near- 
er until he could see the rich color in her 
cheek. Barbara’s back was toward him and 
she was absorbed in her sport. He knew he 
ought to speak or withdraw but he lingered. 
Just as he had decided upon the sportsman’s 
salutation, “What luck?” Barbara’s rod gave 
a quick, sharp bend and he heard the reel hiss 
and rattle as the line spun through the leaders. 
The girl rose and the bass leaped well above 
the water some rods away. 

Ford saw that it was a big one, five or six 
pounds, he imagined, and he also saw that 
the reel was almost empty when Barbara 
began to wind it in. 

“Play him, play him,” he shouted, eagerly. 
"You’ll lose him that way.” 

Barbara did not look around, but she 
dropped the point of her rod and put the 


THE PURPLE RIM. 


25 


check on her reel. The strain on the tip re- 
laxed and a moment later the bass dashed 
to the surface much nearer the boat. Quick 
as a flash the girl began to take in the slack. 

“She knows her business/’ Ford thought, 
but he swung clear of his own line and hack- 
ed in near Barbara’s boat with noiseless 
strokes. 

“Want any help?’’ he asked, softly. 

The girl Shook her head. His bass-ship 
was a good deal nearer the boat, but he 
showed no signs of giving up the fight, mat- 
ing short but vigorous rushes through the wa- 
ter, Barbara playing him like a veteran. 
After ten or fifteen minutes his struggles 
grew weaker and Barbara again reeled in 
slowly and carefully. There was little re- 
sistance this time and she drew her prize 
within a few feet of the boat where his bronze 
back gleamed through the water. Then the 
fish made another vicious plunge, carrying 
off a hundred feet O'f line. Barbara had 
never handled so large a fish before, her arm 
was beginning to shake with the excitement 
and strain and Ford saw that she never 
could land him by the rod. 

“Throw me your net,” he called. 

Barbara tossed him the net with her left 
hand. In a moment Ford was upon the bass 
and about to pass the landing net under him. 
Then the fish gave another plunge and he 
had to repeat the manoeuver, that time suc- 
cessfully. 

When he had netted the fish, he found that 
he had forgotten to ship his oars, and they 
were floating out in the lake. Barbara pulled 
the boats together and Ford deposited the 
gamey captive at her feet. 

“Thank you,” Barbara panted. “I should 
have lost him but for you, and isn’t he a 
beauty?” 

“He is, Indeed, and a stubborn fighter. 
Any fisherman might be proud of him.” 

“It is a joint capture though, and I can’t 
take all the credit.” 

“Unfortunately, I am afraid you will have 
to take more. I have lost my oars and must 


26 THE PURPLE RIM. 

ask you to take me as well as the bass into 
your boat until I can pick them up.” 

‘‘Don’t land on my precious bass,” Bar- 
bara said, smiling. ‘‘Bring over your chain 
and I will tow your boat till you find the 
oars.’' 

It is idle to attempt to maintain formality 
after an incident like that. Ford speedily 
recovered his oars, but he did not return to 
his own boat. When Barbara’s cottage was 
reached he tied both boats and carried the 
fish, insisting that he must find proper fish 
scales to weigh the monster. Whether the 
scales had been adjusted to summer resort 
proportions I do not know, but they recorded a 
weight of 6% pounds. 

This was only the second week in August. 
The capture was followed by other excursions. 
Barbara no longer tried to evade Ford’s at- 
tentions and Mrs. Appleton said nothing. She 
knew her daughter and was wise enough to 
draw conclusions without asking questions. 

In the last week of the month Ford and 
Barbara sat in the shadow of the big maple, 
he in the hammock and she in a camp chair 
close by. Mrs. Appleton had retired to the 
cottage, the lights twinkled softly up and 
down the lake, the plash of the oars was 
borne through the night air and the songs of 
boatloads of young people: 

Over the rolling waters go, 

Come from the dying moon and blow, 

Blow him again to me. 

Sang a quartet far down the lake. Barbara 
hummed the alto softly and as the voices 
passed out of hearing she asked: 

‘‘And must you really go in the morning, 
Robert?” 

That use of his name thrilled Ford deeply 
It was new and it seemed tender as a caress. 

‘‘I am afraid I must, darling. This offer is 
very sudden and a sub editorship on the Over- 
look is something not to be trifled with — 
especially now,” with an emphasis on the last 
words which sent the blood softly flushing 
through Barbara’s cheeks and made her glad 
of the shielding darkness. 


THE PURPLE HIM. 27 

“And you will see father as soon as you 
have arranged with the editor?” 

“And as soon as I can get up my courage. 
Do you think he will receive kindly a poor 
devil of a sub editor who comes to steal his 
precious jewel? Really, Barbara, you must 
pity me a little when I go to meet your 
father.’ I ought to be so consumed with the 
egotism of my own happiness that I could see 
nothing else. Perhaps it is my habit of try- 
ing to put myself in the other fellow’s place, 
but I can’t help seeing your father’s side of 
it, too. I shouldn’t blame him if he treated 
me like a robber, and yet I must have you.” 

“Dear father,” Barbara murmured. Then 
rising she stood in front of her lover. She 
reached her hands down upon his shoulders. 

“Tell him,” she whispered, “ that I love 
you very, very dearly and that if he remem- 
bers when mother was twenty he will un- 
derstand.” 

“My darling,” Ford murmured, tears spring- 
ing to his eyes. And as they stood clasped in 
each other’s arms there came forth out of the 
darkness of the lake a tenor voice singing: 

Across the hills and far away, 

Beyond their utmost purple rim, 

Beyond the night, across the day, 

Thro’ all the world, she followed him. 


FOR SEVEN DAYS A TRAMP. 



DON’T like the rut. That’s why I set 
off, alone, not very long ago, with 
just a dollar in my pocket, to spend a 
week as a tramp. There was nothing 
of the genteel amateur about the ex- 
periences I encountered in that week. I worked 
with the tramps, slept in jail with Weary Wrag- 


gles, starved with' Wandering Willie, beat 
the freights to Philadelphia, was a camel 
driver and an Egyptian in Barnum & Bailey’s 
show, earned a dollar and a half as a mason’s 
laborer and returned as strong and as healthy 
as a horse and with an appetite that was the 
despair oif my landlady for weeks. 

The secret of my rather novel trip was my 
own. I rigged myself out as nearly as I could 
like some decent young fellow, down at 
heel, out o’ pocket, more unfortunate than 
vicious and struck out from Boston early 
one fine summer morning, the objective point 
as the end of my adventure being Philadel- 
phia. I reached Worcester, Mass., forlorn and 
weary, about 8 o’clock that night with 10 
cents and a chew of tobacco in my pocket. I 
dined sumptuously and luxuriously on a 
schooner of beer and the tobacco, and, after 
a stroll through the pretty little Massachu- 
setts town, I went to the police station and 
asked for lodging for the night. The ser- 
geant on duty eyed me closely for a moment 
and then gruffly demanded my name, my 
age, the place of my birth, where I had come 
from, where I was going and then he rang 
a bell. A policeman answered the call. He 
grabbed my cap, thrust me against the wall 
and roughly went through my pockets, taking 
ail I had. Then I was shown into a big cell 
with a long, double sort of shelving platform 
running the whole distance. 

That, the officer said, was my bed. It was 
occupied by twenty or thirty tramps, some of 
them so drunk they had taken off everything 
before flinging themselves on the rough, bare 


FOR SEVEN DAYS A TRAMP. 29 

planks, and nearly all of them with the in- 
delible marks of debauch and infamy stamped 
upon them. As the night wore on, other 
tramps were flung into the cell and as the 
heavy iron gate clanged on each new visitor 
a muttered curse was thrown at him for 
disturbing the heavy slumber of the other 
occupants of the cell. The night passed un- 
eventfully except for a fight. 

At 5 o’clock in the morning the sleepers 
were awakened and led up to the guard room, 
where they were each handed a mop and 
a pail and ordered to clean out the building. 
Then we were all treated with a luxurious 
breakfast of crackers and water and sent 
about our business. 

Clinton wasn’t very far away and I deter- 
mined to foot it thither. My early lunch con- 
sisted of a saloon sandwich and a glass of 
beer. That left me without a penny, but the 
day was glorious and my spirits rose with the 
sun. At Clinton Barnum’s circus was in town 
for the day and I applied for a job. Arrange- 
ments were just in progress for the usual 
street parade and one of the hands had fallen 
sick. I got his place temporarily. He played 
the distinguished part of a Bedouin in the pa- 
rade and in the show itself. They rigged 
me out in a gay dress and many colors with 
sashes and a pair of gaudy, flowing panta- 
loons, daubed some reddish powder over my 
face, stuck a huge turban on my head and 
lo, I was a child of the desert. The camels 
were hitched two abreast and led by other 
Bedouins so that all we sons of the desert 
had to do was to sit on the humps and look 
as fierce and as picturesque as we could. If 
you have never ridden a camel over the hard, 
stony street, don’t, do it. 

The march was all very well when the big, 
clumsy beasts strode leisurely along in the 
parade, but when there came a gap in the 
line and they were started on one of their 
long, wobbling gallops the agony to the 
man who had never played at being a son 
of the desert on a camel’s back before was 
almost unbearable. The camel’s back is 
broad and my legs were short, not to say 


30 FOR SEVEN DAYS A TRAMP. 

dumpy; its hump was hard and at every leap 
and wobble I came down severely on the hard 
hump. I clung desperately to the saddle, 
but still, at every leap I came down hard and 
determinedly and with unerring precision 
on the same place. In this way we traveled 
through the streets of Clinton about a mile 
and a half. Then I was given a hearty din- 
ner with the rest of the Bedouins and the 
ladies of the harem and Roman warriors. 
I was scarcely able to move and, chiefly for 
my own convenience, ate my dinner standing 
up. That camel’s hump still lingered with 
me. I mounted the beast again for the slow 
parade in the tent. That was easy, though, 
and all I had to do after that was to look 
devilish, brandish a spear and shout “Hur- 
rah!” when Rome fell. I got half a dollar 
for the day’s work and then gave up my 
professional career without a sigh. 

I was stiff and sore the next morning, al- 
though I had spent the night in a bed for 
which I paid 30 cents. I meant to linger 
there for the best part of the day, but about 9 
o’clock a virago of a woman came up to my 
room and routed me out. She appeared des- 
perately anxious to know what I expected for 
30 cents. 

I limped painfully out of town and took to 
the railroad tracks. 

The exercise presently brought me some 
relief and at a road house I made an excellent 
meal of home made bread and butter and 
milk, for which I paid 10 cents. 

Singularly enough, I had not met any of the 
noble fraternity of tramps, although I had 
read that the railroad ties were full of them. 
When I had got over about twenty miles of 
ties, however, I stumbled across a shabby 
looking fellow of about 40, asleep on a bank. 
I woke him up and asked him if he knew of 
any place where I could get work for my 
night’s lodging. 

“Work be — ,” gruffly exclaimed the tramp. 
“Take a sup out. o’ this,” and with surly hos- 
pitality he produced a little black bottle of 
villainous whisky. Then he became sociable 


FOR SEVEN BAYS A TEA Air. 31 

and told me that about five or six miles down 
the road there was a farm where I might get 
an odd job. He volunteered to accompany 
me, but firmly declined to work. He said 
he wasn’t going to take any chances. He wait- 
ed some distance away while I went up to 
the farm and asked for a job. At the request 
of the owner I tackled a cord of stiff wood 
and then I weeded out the front garden un- 
til arms and back ached. But I got a quar- 
ter for my labor, with a big cheese sandwich 
and permission to sleep in the bam. 

Then I rejoined my companion and that 
night he taught me how to jump a freight. 
This is rather a dangerous operation. The 
conductors of freights on the main lines are 
constantly on the lookout for tramps, es- 
pecially at the stations, where they fling their 
unwelcome visitors off without ceremony. 
We caught our freight about a quarter of a 
mile from the station, where it necessarily 
slowed up, and my companion swung himself 
on to a buffer with the skill of an artist. 
Then he gripped me by the collar and as- 
sisted me to’ an equally comfortable seat. In 
this way we rode through the night, the big, 
lumbering car bumping me in my risky perch 
till I thought it would shake every bone in 
my body loose. We alighted near Wayne, 
about sixteen miles out of Philadelphia, and 
here I made the luckiest hits of the week. A 
big contractor in Wayne had gone on a 
fortnight's debauch and his men, for the most 
part, had left him, because they couldn’t get 
their pay. His wife very readily gave me a 
job as a laborer on a cellar, which was near- 
ing completion. I was to get $1.25 a day. I 
thought it was great fun at first. When a 
mason yelled out: “Bricks!” I had to fill a 
wheelbarrow with bricks and take them to 
him. When another cried: “Mortar!” I had 
to shoot off in hot haste with a barrow full 
of mortar. 

This went on all day and when night came 
I was fairly dead beat. I had been working 
all day under a blazing sun and the sharp 
edges of the bricks cut into my hands which 
were all unused to such labor and my back 


32 FOR SEVEN DAYS A TIiAMP. 

seemed as if it would break. But I had a 
glorious appetite for supper, which, by the 
way, I had to get myself. The contractor’s 
wife had a great brood of hens and chickens 
and she had three killed. She killed one by 
sticking a long thin knife through its neck 
and then she directed me to slaughter the 
other two. I stuck the first one through the 
neck as directed, and then set it down. To 
my amazement and dismay the bird hopped 
away and began to pick up crumbs as un- 
concernedly as if it hadn’t been stuck at all. 
“That’s all right,” explained the woman, 
“it’ll drop in a minute.” But that chicken 
didn’t drop at all and when it continued to 
meander around the yard with a hole in its 
neck, she directed me to take an ax and 
chop its head off, which I did. One man held 
its neck over a block, the head dropped at a 
blow, but the headless chicken wobbled about 
the yard for a moment and then it dropped 
dead. A little later we ate it. 

The next day there occurred the most pa- 
thetic scene of all my week’s vagaries, and it 
brought me home. A freight car with a truck 
'load of petroleum was laid over on a siding 
for the night. Toward morning it caught fire 
mysteriously and the whole train was soon 
ablaze. The flames reached the petroleum and 
the fiery liquid added to the horror as well 
as to the brilliancy of the spectacle. The hor- 
ror of the thing consisted in the wretched fact 
that three unfortunate tramps were in the 
closed car. They had stolen a ride and their 
bones, charred almost to a cinder, were dis- 
covered in the car when the fire had burned 
itself out. I wrote the story of the tragedy 
for a Philadelphia paper, got $5 for it and came 
home in luxury. 

The experiences of the week were novel 
and on the whole exciting. They taught me 
at least this: That there were people more 
wretched in the world than I could ever hope 
to be, that misery likes company, and that it is 
always open hearted and unfailingly ready to 
share with you the bit of comfort or the 
gleam of sunshine that comes to it. 


A SCORCH WITH A PHANTOM 


HAD been touring awheel in Eastern 
Pennsylvania and two days of my out- 
ing remained when I put up at the 

hotel in the little town of W 

one fine afternoon in September. 
A journey of fifty miles had served 
to exhilarate rather than fatigue me, for 
it was a golden autumn: day when 
animate and inanimate things seemed to 
possess alike a thrill of life. Supper eaten, t 
found myself an object of interest to the lit- 
tle knot of loungers that gathers round the 
porch of every country inn at .evening. Casu- 
al inquiry as to the conditioo^m the roads 
roundabout elicited ready information that 
they were in fine shape and lay across a rolling 
country. An hour’s cha't whiled away the in- 
terval between dusk and darkness and I 
watched the moon thrust first a silver rim and 
then a nearly perfect disk up over the hills in 
the East. 

“Do you have to carry a lamp to ride here 
nights?” I asked. 

“’Tism’t necessary,” said the hotel keeper. 

I went into the office, stripped my wheel of 
Its bulky luggage carrier and trundled it out 
into the wad. 

“If you’re lookin’ for a good ride,” said 
the proprietor, “follow this road and keep 
turnin’ to the right at all the junctions. It’ll 
take you round in a twenty-mile circle and 
land you back here.” 

- “Thanks,” I called back as I dropped into the 
saddle. A few minutes later I was skimiming 
past the isolated houses on the outskirts of 
the village. The night was an ideal one for 
a cyclist. The breeze was cool and gentle, 
and as the moon climbed higher flickering 
black shadows danced to and fro on a road of 
milky whiteness. I passed a couple of merry 
wagon parties and then as I sped along the 
winding pike the signs of civilization grew 
fewer until only the well kept thoroughfare 



34 A SCORCH WITH A PHANTOM. 

served as a reminder of the hand of man. Now 
the woods on either side of the road became 
more frequent and I shot along under long 
archways of trees. Steep hills semed to melt 
away into gentle slopes and I whirled down 
the inclines in the full enjoyment of a glorious 
night. 

Soon I entered another avenue of trees. 
I hummed softly to myself a few snatches of 
song and was in the gayest of spirits. Then 
I became aware of a presence at my side. 

I swerved violently and missed by a hair’s 
breadth a collision with a wheelman who 
had noiselessly overtaken me. So startled 
was I that I uttered an angry exclamation as 
I recovered myself. The strange rider shot 
ahead a few feet and then dropped back at 
my side. A sharp rebuke was on my tongue, 
when I checked myself and sought a closer 
glimpse of my unbidden companion. He held 
bis place at my side with no apparent ex- 
ertion, although our pace was rapid, and I 
soon became aware that his conduct was, to 
say the least, peculiar. 

Bent low over a pair of racing handle bars, 
his face was screened from view in the un- 
certain light. As accurately as I could dis- 
cern, he was garbed in a suit of black tights. 
On his head was a close fitting cap. His fig- 
ure was tall, slender and athletic. But what 
most attracted my attention was his wheel, 
which seemed to be of such marvelously 
fine construction that it slipped along with- 
out the click of a chain link or the creak 
of a saddle nut. He rode so close to me that 
I could have touched him by putting out my 
hand, vet never once did he raise his head 
or by word or sign give indication that he 
was aware of my presence. 

Side by side we shot out into an open 
stretch of road. That I was being used as 
a pacemaker soon became evident. It net- 
tled me when I found that every time 1 
slackened speed he did likewise and every 
time I pedaled more rapidly he held his po- 
sition at my elbow. His conduct and his 
silence disturbed my peace of mind, and I 


A SCORCH WITH A PHANTOM. 35 


decided to rid myself of his company. 1 
increased the pace slowly at first and when we 
reached a slight incline I let out a few links 
more and shot up the grade at top speed. 
My emotion upon reaching the top of the 
hill was that of chagrin when I found him 
still at my side, his head bent low, his legs 
working with ease and precision of piston 
rods. I held the pace until I panted for wind, 
but the black rider was apparently tireless. 
A dozen times I was on the point of speaking 
and finally I blurted: 

“Fine night.” 

lie made no answer, nor even turned his 
head. I was astonished beyond measure and 
felt my anger slowly rising. The pace did 
not slacken; rather it increased, yet never 
for an instant did our positions vary an inch. 
Through woods and over hills we flew. The 
perspiration rolled off my forehead and into 
my eyes until they smarted, yet the stranger 
gave no signs of distress. A heart breaking 
hill loomed ahead and I summoned energy 
for a supreme effort. My wheel swayed and 
shivered under the strain as I shot up the 
incline, but my companion never faltered. 
When we reached the summit he was stil 
gliding at my side, like a shadow. A stee 
descent followed and we rushed down at un- 
bated speed. 

I looked ahead and perceived several hun- 
dred yards in advance a small lake which the 
road encircled after an abrupt turn to the 
right. I also perceived that a narrow foot- 
bridge devoid of hand rail crossed the pond 
where the highway curved. I glanced at the 
strange rider. His gaze seemed bent upon 
the ground, as though he were oblivious of 
any impending danger. The situation was 
becoming critical. We could never make 
the turn at the speed at which we were 
traveling, yet the grade was so steep and 
the distance so short that to slow down was 
impossible. To cross the bridge was the 
only chance, yet there was room for but one 
abreast and who would give way? Dogged 
and angry, I resolved that I would not. Fif- 


36 A SCORCH WITH A PHANTOM. 

t.y yards more and we would be upon it. I 
bent lower and rode like a demon. Twenty- 
five yards and I had gained not an inch. 

“Give way,” I called hoarsely and I grip- 
ped my bars until it seemed as if the steel 
must crumble in my fingers. Five yards 
more and then disaster must come. Sudden- 
ly the stranger shot out and with a clat- 
ter and never a check in our furious career 
we were upon the narrow structure, my 
wheel lapping his by several inches. 

Then to my horror the black rider sat 
erect and slackened speed. I yelled with 
terror and back pedaled until my chain 
screeched and groaned over the sprocket as 
though it would part. The wheels now lap- 
ped by a foot and the crash would be in an 
instant. I remember seeing the black rider 
turn and sway in his saddle like a drunken 
man, there was the flash of a ghastly white 
face and I shut my eyes and waited for the 
shock. 

Loose boards rattled under my wheel, 
there was a jolt and I felt myself 
shoot out upon the road. I glanced back. 
There in the cold, white moonlight was the 
marshy lake, the narrow footbridge, the 
nodding trees. Nothing more. The black 
rider had vanished. 

A wild terror seized me. How I reached 
the hotel I could never afterward remember, 
for I went over the same road two days af- 
terward and it was utterly strange to me. 
All I recall is that I reeled into the yard. 
Then there was a blank until I found myself 
lying on a bench with a curious crowd of men 
gathered around me. 

“You fellers always ride fit ter kill yer- 
selves,” said a man. “What? You came 
over the little bridge? There was a city 
feller drowned in that pond one night last 
summer. We found him and his wheel 
in three foot of water th’ next day.” 


I 


MY FRIEND DESCALLE. 


T is said that most men have made 
their way in the world by minding 
other people’s business, but it was not 
so in iny case. The other clerks in the 
store said I was too reticent for anv 
use, and some declared I was too high 
toned, as they expressed it, to indulge in small 
gossip. Left at an early age to support my- 
self, I had risen by strict attention to de- 
tail, from the useful, but not lucrative place 
of errand boy in carrying bills of lading, to 
become the head of a department in the big 
retail store of Dash & Blank. From the store 
after business hours I had gone to the Young 
Men’s Christian association rooms to read or 
take a whirl in the gymnasium, where I had 
a reputation as an all around athlete. I did 
not seek friends and had only one acquaintance, 
Victor Descalle. He was a handsome fellow 
of uncertain age, and he had a past of which 
he often spoke in a desultory way in w r alks 
after our boarding house dinner. We had 
met there as fellow boarders a year before 
this history begins, xfe had rkh parents 
living in Brooklyn, but they had disowned 
him, he said, for his wild ways, first in the 
East and afterward in the far West. His life 
story was a series of adventures. When I 
expressed surprise at his recitals he would 
only laugh, and so good humoredly call 
me a tenderfoot, that I w'as fain to conclude 
that he was not half so bad as he seemed, 
and that he was magnifying his exploits. Yet, 
at times, there would be a gleam in his eyes 
when he was angry, and my suspicions would 
be aroused again. He had a strange fascina- 
tion for me, however, and I could not im- 
agine why he chose to fraternize with a com- 
monplace, humdrum sort of a commercial 
person such as I believed myself to be. 

Descalle was running in my mind as I 
sat on the deck of the Atlantic liner St. P — 
on a bright day in June, bound for a short 



38 MY FRIEND D ESC A LIE. 

tour abroad in my vacation. Descalle ran 
in my mind, I say, because he was a link in 
the chain of events that brought me where I 
was. I had not intended to go so far as 
Europe in my outing. In fact, I could not 
afford it, but I had determined to go in order 
to forget myself and all thoughts of a lovely 
face. One day Descalle and I were going to 
New York, and were standing on one of the 
platforms of a bridge car. It was a foggy 
morning. The car w r as crowded and he and 
I were talking of collisions. Suddenly we 
heard shouts in front of th.e train and there 
came that curious, confused murmur that 
foreruns a disaster. The next I saw was the 
opening of the door of the car in front of us 
and there stepped out of it the loveliest being 
I had ever seen. I had time to note her 
perfect blonde type. Just then there was 
a jolt, a crunching sound and then a sudden 
stop. What happened next I never could ex- 
plain, but I had caught the young woman 
just as she was about to pitch forward be- 
tween the cars. I soon discovered that she 
was not one of the fainting kind and she 
released herself from me, though I could 
have held her for a dozen collisions. Tn the 
confusion, I was conscious of keeping panic 
stricken brutes of men from knocking us 
down and was able to at last place her on 
the platform at the New York end. She ex- 
pressed her thanks to me with tears in her 
eyes, and said I had saved her life. That 
seemed putting it rather strong, and I told 
her I thought it was scarcely true, but she in- 
sisted, and refusing further aid, went on her 
way. Descalle had disappeared on the first 
shock of the collision and I saw him scram- 
bling to the platform just as the fair stranger 
had gone. Descalle caught sight of her, 
however, stopped, gazed again, grew pale 
and then red and demanded, with what I 
considered more abruptness than was neces- 
sary, what I had been saying to her. I told 
him all that had happened. He absorbed 
every word with breathless attention, and 
after I had finished, I asked him if he knew 


MY FRIEND DESCALLE. 


39 


my fair divinity. “Do I know her!” exclaim- 
ed Descalle, who bad gathered composure as 
I told my tale, “Why did such a notion take 
possession of you?’’ he replied, with a stare. 
As he became suddenly uncommunicative and 
fell into a rattle and chatter over the bridge 
accident, I let the question pass. 

In the weeks that followed I tried to for- 
get the incident but found it impossible. I 
tried to argue with myself over the absurdity 
of being in love at first sight. That did not 
work a cure, for my dreams were visited by 
that fair face and I awoke morning after 
morning with a cry and found my arms out- 
stretched to grasp the phantom form that 
ever fled tantalizingly before me. My health 
began to suffer and I applied for a vacation 
and it was granted. This was, of course, 
after I had used the old expedient of adver- 
tising by way of personals in the papers, but 
there was no reply. Descalle, whom I per- 
sistently prodded to tell me something of 
what he knew shut me off by asking me 
what my troubles were to him, in a way that 
was intended to be taken jocularly, but which 
I felt was true. I didn’t, therefore, confide 
to him my intention to embark on the steam- 
ship. 

So, heartsick and with no pleasant antici- 
pations before me, I sat that day on the 
steamship’s deck and took little note of the 
din that arose from the transfer of baggage 
from the pier to the lofty steamer beside it. 
I had sought a remote spot on the starboard 
side, beyond the captain’s cabin. With my 
steamer chair arranged at an obtuse angle I 
was buried in a newspaper, when a voice 
nearby went through me like a knife. It was 
the voice of the woman I loved. For a mo- 
ment I could not move and then I dared not 
look for fear of breaking the illusion. With 
my paper still before my eyes I heard her 
saying, as in a dream: 

“Now, papa, you know you’ll be ever so 
much better for a summer abroad. We will 
just sip a little sweetness wherever we find 
honey and just flit on to the next flower.” 


40 


MY FRIEND DESCALLE. 


Then with a sigh, “If only clear mamma had 
lived to go with us. You musn’t think I hur- 
ried you, you old blessed, just because I 
wanted you to catch this steamer.” 

“Well, Imogene, I did think you were a 
little importunate,” said the father. I nearly 
fell off from my chair. He was my em- 
ployer. So that was his daughter I had met 
that day in the bridge car, and my heart 
sank for she was an heiress and could never 
consent to link her future with those of an 
employe in her father’s big establishment. 
All this flashed through my mind in less 
time than it requires to write it and, as I 
lowered my newspaper at the sound of my 
employer’s voice Imogene’s eyes met mine. 
She started and then blushed in the prettiest 
way. Her father was saying: 

“Now, there’s the business I must leave. If 
young Ruthven were to remain I would feel 
that matters would go on all right, but he’s 
going aw T ay, too.” 

I had heard the mention of my own name 
with pleased surprise. It was the first time 
I had heard his opinion of me, and Imogene 
cast a swift look at me over her shoulder and 
it spoke volumes, only I was so dazzled that 
I could not read between the lines. 

“Well, upon my word.” 

The familiar aecents of Descalle sounded in 
my ear and a hearty whack on my shoulder 
roused me. 

“Trying to hide yourself away, eh! You’ll 
soon be dragged out of this corner. Eh? 
You didn’t know I was going over? That’s 
not verj strange, as I didn’t know it myself 
twenty-four hours ago.” 

The sound of Descalle’ s voice had evidently 
reached Imogene and her father as they had 
half turned back to retrace their steps. The 
girl gave a startled look of recognition at 
Descalle, then she said something to her 
father and they turned again and were lost 
in the crowd. 

“Gad, old fellow,” Descalle rattled on, pre- 
tending he had seen nothing of what had 
been going on, “it cost me something to get 


MY FRIEND DESCALLE. 


41 


off on this boat, but I was bound to do that 
when I learned old moneybags and his 
daughter were going. I s’pose you are look- 
ing for a little flirtation yourself, hut it 
won’t go; see! Pretty clever it was of you 
to track them down hiere, Ruthy, my boy. 
Didn’t think you were up to it. Does you 
credit, and all that sort of thing — but I’m a 
little ahead of you. I’ve been paying slight 
attentions that way myself, verbum sap. 
The Old man has made his will giving her 
every cent he possesses.” 

I knew Descalle too well to show the indig- 
nation I felt and replied in monosyllables 
until he drifted off, as he said, to look after 
his baggage, and afterward do the agreeable 
to Imogene. Something about Descalle’s 
manner made my blood boil, and as he dis- 
appeared there seemed to settle a blank de- 
spair over my life. I had fled to avoid 
trouble and had only made matters worse. 
As we moved away from the pier and down 
the glorious upper bay I took little note of 
events. In the Narrows, however, I noticed 
a rapid tug put off from quarantine and ap- 
proach, with two men on deck, and as the 
ship was going at reduced speed the men 
caught on and clambered on board. They 
were so evidently belated passengers that I 
dismissed the incident from my mind. 

Day after day passed. Descalle w'as play- 
ing poker most of the time in the card room. 
Imogene and her father rarely came on deck 
and when they did Descalle was all atten- 
tion, but he seemed making little progress 
with Imogene. The last night before we 
were to arrive at Queenstown I was restless 
and sought the most secluded spot I could 
find. It was far aft. A huge ventilator 
screened me from the view of pedestrians. 
Suddenly I heard the voices of Descalle and 
my employer. They were approaching, talk- 
ing more and more excitedly. The old man 
was denying Descalle something, and he in 
turn was pleading that Imogene would learn 
to love him if her father would consent to 
their marriage. 


42 


MY FRIEND RE RCA LIE. 


“Victor,” he broke out, “I know your father 
and mother. They are of God’s nobility, but 
you — you — no, no, it cannot be!” 

Descalle bad reached a spot opposite me 
and I could see his eyes gleam in the dark- 
ness. He was carrying a sword cane and 
the weapon flashed out of its sheath. An in- 
stant more and the blade would have 
passed through the old man’s body and he 
would have been lifted and thrown over the 
bulwarks into the waves rushing past us. 
Two bounds and I was between the men try- 
ing to grasp the sword. I missed, and got 
a thrust through the shoulder that seemed 
as though a hot iron had pierced me. I 
oould see three shadows glide up as every- 
thing began to waver and grow black before 
my eyes. 

“Ruthven tried to stab the old man,” said 
Descalle, coolly, to tw r o men and Imogens, 
as they came up. “He jumped from an am- 
bush and I prevented him by seizing his 
sword and pressing him back with it.” 

“That gold brick yarn won’t pass current 
this fcime, Descalle,” said one of the men, 
at the same time picking up the sword. 
“Seems to me I saw this sword once down 
in ’Frisco. It was said that it laid out Broncho 
Pete at Sally Dolore’s dance house. The game 
is ended, Descalle. We want you for raising 
a check in New York the day before we 
sailed and afterwards some people out West 
would like to see your handsome face. 

Descalle had edged near to the bulwark 
while the detective had been speaking and 
suddenly dashed away and attempted to scale 
it and sprng overboard. He was quickly 
grasped by the other detective, who muttered: 

“That’s insultin’, that is, Descalle; did you 
think we don’t know our business?” 

With folded arms and head on his bosom 
Descalle was led away to be locked up. Mean- 
while Imogene’s father had hastened for the 
ship’s doctor. She had spoken my name in 
the moment that the detectives came and had 
said: 

******* 


/ 


MY FRIEND DESCALIE. 


43 


Mrs. Ruthven has detected me writing this 
and has put her small white hand over the 
characters at the foot of the page, and said: 
“That’s all right, Ruthy, dear; never mind 
what I said. It’s nobody’s business but ours. 
But I’ll let you tell that I got papa to go on 
the steamer because I couldn’t bear to have 
you go away. Of course after the accident I 
found out who you were, though you couldn’t 
find me, goosey.” 

“But I can tell how you nursed me back 
to health?” 

“Nonsense, the ship’s doctor did it; but you 
can tell how you have become the head of the 
firm and how 

“ and how my wife tyrannizes over 

me?” 

“Why, certainly, and how you are the 
dearest of dears.” 


IN CAMP CEDAR CLOVE. 


P course, the back yard was a large 
one and it had currant bushes and 
one or two apple trees, and a wee 
barn with glass windows. But it was 
a city yard just the same and hard- 
ly a stone’s throw from a busy thorough- 
fare, where the ice wagons came on particu- 
larly cold days and coal carts trundled to 
and fro on sweltering occasions with that 
perversity of tradesmen’s vehicles that 
makes town life a condimental variety and a 
joy forever. Years ago the place had been a 
farm until the land boomer and the ubiqui- 
tous trolley transformed things, leaving this 
block of verdant land to shame the folks who 
turned clover fields into twenty foot lots at 
$200 down and $5 a month, with a grand piano 
and a lamppost thrown in. 

Why this particular spot should have es- 
caped the real estate man was a subject of 
considerable discussion in the Queen Anne 
monstrosities and the frame apartment 
houses surrounding it, but the fact really was 
that Farmer Stickinthemud had held this 
acre of ground to grow more valuable, and 
had lost all the money he made on the rest 
of his farm trying to pay taxes on it. Par- 
mer S. has moved to Flatlands with the trol- 
ley after him, and an alderman has bought 
his little remnant and will sell it to the city 
government for a couple of hundred thousand 
dollars for a park, while Parmer S. sprinkles 
tacks on the side path in Flatlands and votes 
for a new administration every year. 

Anyway, my wife and I lived for a time in 
the little white frame cottage the farmer had 
lost on the mortgage, and the two children 
used the diminutive barn for a play house. 
In mentioning the fact that I was a reporter 
the accompanying fact that I was not wealthy 
goes without saying, and when the summer 
came and a wild desire to spend a couple of 




IN CAMP CEDAR CLOVE. 


45 


weeks’ vacation camping out was broached 
the painful thought loomed up that, beside the 
vacation, we had nothing to spend. It was 
just as economical to talk of the Ad'irondacks 
as the Thousand Islands, and much of the 
pleasure of anticipation was used up in dis- 
cussing the special advantages of these 
places. Finally we quarreled over the mos- 
quitoes and insects of the Adirondacks and 
the too formal and aristocratic requirements 
of the Thousand Islands. A compromise was 
necessary. My wife declared Brooklyn was 
good enough for her. But my mind was set 
on camping out if I had to borrow the last 
cent the restaurant man at the office had. I 
would not stay in that stuffy home and sleep 
in a comfortable bed and have my meals on 
a table with chairs to sit in any longer. This 
monotony of comfort was palling on me, and 
as for Acca, my wife, she was growing thin 
and pale warning the butcher she would trade 
elsewhere if he would persist in presenting his 
bill. All the tradesmen had a horrible habit 
of presenting bills just as some dinner to a 
reporter newly elected to the legislative staff 
took my last cent. 

Suddenly an idea struck me. These things 
always strike suddenly. A clump of ever- 
green trees in the back yard concealed a di- 
lapidated chicken coop. Why not set up a 
tent there? Half the enjoyment ofl a vaca- 
tion is imagination. Who would sleep on a 
hard bed, with suggestions of last year’s corn 
field in its mattress, and eat vegetables that 
come from the nearest town in cans, if igno- 
rance did not create the bliss that makes 
wisdom foolish? Ha! Here was an Adiron- 
dacks, Lakewood and Long Island all in one 
and as isolated as if it were miles away. 

That night two A tents came home in an 
express wagon. Acca took bold in great 
shape, and as for the children they were de- 
lirious with joy. My vacation was several 
weeks off and lots of time was at my dis- 
posal to properly take possession of Cedar 
Clove, our camping ground. Bridget, the 
washerwoman, was very enthusiastic over it, 


46 IN CAMP CEPAli CLOVE. 

and wanted to come too, and promised to 
pay her own transportation. No one spoke 
of the place without a far away expression 
and a Saratoga trunk smile. So perfectly 
did we deceive ourselves, that the clump of 
cedars seemed as far off as pay day on 
Wednesday night. We looked at the spot 
through the large end otf opera glasses, and 
“Trilby” and the Brooklyn Eagle gave place 
to “Robinson Crusoe” and the “Swiss Fam- 
ily Robinson.” One day we organized an ex- 
ploring expedition and descended upon the 
place in bicycle costumes to give an outing 
air to the trip. It was ideal in every way 
but one. There was no trickling stream or 
murmuring brooklet. This had to be reme- 
died. That night I bribed the office boy ro 
write up the prize fight I was assigned to, 
and taking a wheelbarrow and the jubilant 
Bridget with me descended upon an unfin- 
ished house nearby and apropriated to my 
building fund more rocks than ever went 
into such a fund before. These rocks were 
artistically piled up around an iron water 
pipe that stood near Cedar Clove and the 
crevices were filled with d'irt and sprinkled 
with grass seed. A trench was dug, even 
Acca taking a shovel and standing by while 
Bridget and I finished the mountain stream’s 
bed. Another raid upon the house nearby 
and a lot of Shining pebbles were secured, 
and when all was ready the faucet was 'turned 
on and out gushed a spring of natural water. 

It was a great success, and we immediately 
christened the place Minnehaha falls. To be 
sure the grass wouldn’t grow, but the weeds 
grew wild and so did Acca when Bridget 
brought two young kids and several chick- 
ens. The chickens were a great success, too. 
They helped us raise vegetables where they 
never came up before. They also caused 
several gardens of flowers to come up, and 
the goats raised cane generally, so that Camp 
Cedar Clove soon became quite tropical. 
As for me, I knew this vacation would be a 
grand one, for I was more worn out already 
than I had ever been on any other one. I 


47 


IN GAMP CEDAR CLOVE. 

could easily calculate that it would take an- 
other winter of work to rest me after this 
little relaxation, and Acca said she never 
saw me look so much as if I had been on a 
vacation before. 

Well, at last the day came and we tramped 
forth from our houses, the two kids drawing 
a carriage with the other kids in it. 
Bridget was loaded in several ways and Acca 
and I carried a miscellaneous assortment of 
the most useless household utensiis we could 
find. After us came Rory, the dog, and 
bringing up in the rear were our live stock — 
three ducks, a rooster, some fine young 
chickens and a hen who had seen better 
days. These were all contributed by Bridget, 
who possessed a fascination for them that 
was touching. They were constantly expect- 
ing to be fed and lived in persistent pursuit 
of that deceit with a fidelity that brought vis- 
ions of the installment agency to my mind, 
which were dispelled, however, by the charms 
of Camp Cedar Clove. 

At the rate of a foot a mile we were sixty 
miles from the house and calculating four- 
teen feet in the party, including the dog’s, 
we found we were actually 840 miles from 
home. Tents were pitched in the circle of 
cedars, the mountain torrent turned on and 
Acca and I sat down to enjoy the primitive 
pleasures of our rural retreat. The chicken 
coop was demolished and a fire started with its 
remains. The first prosaic break occurred at 
this point, when a rude and unromantic po- 
liceman appeared and wanted the fire ex- 
tinguished and hesitated whether he had not 
better arrest the whole family as lunatics. I 
was compelled to descend to the mean reali- 
ties of ordinary life for a moment and con- 
vince him I was sane by promising to write 
a real nice puff about his brave capture of 
a tramp who was asleep in our barn. 

Acca meanwhile had gone to the kitchen 
tent, where the eatables were stowed, and 
now she came rushing forth, tears of joy 
streaming down her cheeks as she threw her 
arms around my neck. 


48 


IN CAMP CEDAR CLOVE. 


“Austin, Austin, this is just too natural 
for anything!” she cried. “The sugar is al- 
ready full of ants and a gigantic black spider 
has been drowned in the milk. If we only 
had a little seashore for the children now.” 

I smiled and pointed to a corner of the yard 
where, the night before, Bridget’s husband 
had dumped two or three loads of white sand. 
Budge and Toddy, the children, were already 
digging away in it. A cry of joy came from 
Budge as he picked something up and came 
dancing toward us. It was a clam. The 
butcher’s boy had been ordered to bury a 
bushel there every other day. Many other 
harmless deceits of this kind added to the 
event and helped out imagination. 

Even Budge and Toddy entered into the 
thing with a vim and wondrous were the 
tales they told of huge animals and “drefful 
snakes” that dwelt in the bushes back of the 
barn. Now Acca didn’t altogether fancy this 
imaginative trait of the children but I re- 
proached her with suggestions of the graphic 
correspondent of Cuban wars Budge would 
one day be with such a training. Well, Acca 
and I have had many fine vacations since 
then, stuffy with white flannel suits and lace 
dresses, but we never forget the thrilling 
days we spent in the forest in our back yard, 
bright with the light that never was on sea 
or land. When people ask where this won- 
derful camp was, a vague expression enters 
the eyes of the family ensemble and Budge 
and Toddy whisper, “And there was wild ani- 
mals and drefful snakes and booful brooks 
what papa turned on.” 


THE HILLS OF TENNESSEE. 


N exquisite perfume of laurel and 
pine came to me on the fresh 
morning air. From above the 
range of great, bold mountains 
we had circled for the hour 
and more, the sun was peeping, veil- 
ed in the amber mists that yet filled 
the valley with uncertain shadows — hanging 
there as if loth to leave the bosom of the 
river that wound its way amid the rocky hills 
like a silver chain flung upon a lady’s dress- 
ing table. Through the night, as our train 
crept slowly up the grade to the table of the 
Cumberland, I had drawn in each breath an 
added sense of life I had not felt in years — 
a sense that needed but the light of dawn to 
kindle into perfect being. 

Penned in the city’s close confines, I had 
for years struggled to gain footing in my 
chosen profession. Never before had I felt 
it possible to lay down the fight for a change 
of scene and— rest. But the urgent appeal 
had come for me to spend a fortnight — “as 
long as I liked”— the letter ran, with a fellow 
member of my profession and my alma mater. 
How he came to be buried in the mountains 
of Tennessee I did not know, or stop to ques- 
tion then. I had heard in the years since 
leaving college of his work, of his scientific 
investigations, and rapid rise in his profes- 
sion. I had even come across a paper cr two 
of his — but in the reading I saw hints of 
strange theories and other thoughts the trend 
of which I felt beyond me. But that aside, 
I had accepted his invitation, and there he 
stood beside the station as I stepped from the 
train. 

The greeting over, I took time to look at 
him as we tramped up the steep, past the 
little settlement and beyond the cabin he 
said he had pre-empted. I saw the years had 
left their trace upon him in spite of youth. 
Deep lines showed about his eyes and mouth. 



8 


50 


THE HILLS OF TENNESSEE. 


The hair was thickly streaked with gray, the 
shoulders bent, the figure lean. The eyes — 
I could not see for ever were they turned else- 
where. 

Within the cabin — clean and comfortable 
for such a place — a hickory fire crackled cheer- 
ily upon the hearth. About were books and 
many instruments suggestive of his calling. 

“You wonder, old man," he began, as we 
stretched our legs before the blaze with pipes 
well aglow, “why I am here — why I have been 
here for two months and more.” 

I admitted frankly that I did. 

“I came for rest.” He took from a case as 
he spoke, a quaintly carved box and fumbled 
with the lock. “I came for work. I came 
that I might be nearer nature’s heart. I cam' 
to escape the tangle of men’s lives.” 

He had opened the queer box and sat strok- 
ing one of the two vials it inclosed. Taking 
it in his hand he held it toward the fire, and 
the light seemed to glow afresh in the liquid 
it contained. 

“See how it sparkles,” he mused, as if not 
for my ear. A strange brightness came into 
his eyes. The expression of his face was 
one of rapture. “It is the essence of all 
things — life. I made it here — here, where 
all is purity, where man may touch the hid- 
den sources of all that is. It is mine. With 
its precious drops I stop the onward stride 
of time; cry halt to the worm of decay and 
death is not.” 

He had arisen and stood before me with 
his strangely lighted eyes gazing intently 
into mine. Then he laughed, laughed his old 
hearty laugh as if it were all a joke and one 
well played upon me. It was more comfort- 
able to hear him as he talked of the other 
vial and its contents. The strange light had 
faded from his eyes and he might have been 
before his clinic. The change puzzled me. 

“I have come to be a sort of crank, I 
guess,” he said, with his old frankness, “at 
least, as far as the study of disease germs is 
concerned. Indeed, I think we medical men 
have tipped but a corner of the truth so far. 


THE HILLS OF TENNESSEE. 51 

Here I have bottled a combination of mi- 
crobes that once infused into poor humanity 
would baffle in effect all the skill of which 
we boast. These I gathered in the haunts 
of men — in our great centers of humanity. 
This,” and he turned the other vial toward 
the fire again, ‘‘I discovered here among 
God’s footstools. Life and death, I call 
them,” and he smiled again. 

* * * 

She had become a familiar object in my 
tramps about the mountains and as she stood 
leaning against the gray bowlder beside the 
little rivulet that leaped in foam and mist 
from the ledge above, the picture was not 
displeasing. The mellow sunlight seemed to 
touch and linger about her face, burnishing 
to deeper hues the sheen of her yellow hair. 
Beneath her rich brown skin the blood came 
full and strong flushing the cheeks and ting- 
ing the half open lips. A bright colored ker- 
chief knotted about the throat was the one 
bit of relief to the somber tone of her plain, 
homespun dress. 

She handed me the cup with its sparkling 
contents and I drank laughingly to her grave, 
serious face. 

“What a pity such a one must live here in 
these benighted hills. Yet, I suppose, she has 
known naught else and is content.” 

I said it as we sat before the fire, my host 
and I. 

“And why not?” he answered. 

“But she seems above her station — I mean 
fitted for the polishing and refinements of a 
higher plane of life.” 

“And why higher? Ah, my boy, it is but 
the veneer society puts on that hides the 
monstrous rottenness beneath. The people 
of these mountains are what you see — genu- 
ine. She — ” he stood up and, walking to the 
window, gazed out into the silver moonlight. 

“You are hardly the man to arraign society 
in so harsh a way, courted as you have been 
and favored. Upon my soul, you had better 
give up this strange life of yours and come 
back to your proper sphere.” 

He turned and walked to me. 


52 


THE HILLS OF TENNESSEE. 


“I am never going back.” 

There was something in his voice that 
sounded earnest and decided. When he spoke 
again it was with a tenderness that startled 
me. 

“I shall stay here with her.” 

Turning his intense gaze upon me he went 
on with an earnestness that held me silent: 
‘‘I love her. Here we are to live on and on 
while the wcrld spins out its fitful span. 
Through all the ages that have been before 
she was destined here for me and I for her. It 
matters not that in the changes she should be 
here amid these simple mountain folk. Fate 
led my work and my journeyings to these 
great rugged hills for she was here — strong 
and unsullied as they themselves. Death can- 
not part us, for to me there is no death. 
I have unlocked the secret for which the 
ancients labored long ago and she shall share 
it with me — but no other.” 

What if he had, by some strange power or 
chance, unearthed the secret of which he 
talked. I had labored 'long and unremittingly 
in the studies of my profession and with 
the unfolding cif new truths and principles 
had come, sometimes, strange uncertainties 
and imaginations that tottered reason and 
bid me halt this side the verge. But no! 
He had gone beyond. These strange thoughts 
of his — the vials — so easily called up might 
be dispelled by healthful reasoning; but as 
for the love I saw he felt for her — there was 
the danger. That he should stoop so far be- 
low him to choose a mate seemed more a 
pressing calamity than the hallucinations of 
his brain. How would his family look upon 
her as an annex? Pure and good she might 
be; beautiful, in a measure, I knew her, but 
what in common with him could she have — 
this daughter of the mountains? 

So did I argue safely with my host. So 
might I have argued with the granite of the 
hills that towered high above our cabin 
home. 


THE HILLS OF TENNESSEE. 


53 


Within the days that followed I saw her as 
before. In my zealousness for his good I had 
planned to speak to hier oif him, to ask her 
for his sake to go away beyond his reach. 
But when her tender eyes were raised to 
mine and the grave face flushed at some 
trivial word of kindness I cou'ld not muster up 
the words in brave enough array to speak. 
So ran the days of my vacation, almost up 
to their c1op« 

The glory of the hills with all their myriad 
tints of autumn, the murmur of the mountain 
stream and the sunlight sifting through the 
changing mists that came trooping up the 
valley was upon me, and to sit and dream 
alone upon the porch of our little cabin was 
bliss enough. The far away drum of some dil- 
igent woodpecker came to me, and near at 
hand the chirps of a cricket seemed almost 
too sharp and bustling for the time. Was it 
losing so much of life to live on so forever? 

My host came up the path. 

I noticed through my half closed eyes that 
he, too, felt thie influence of the day and 
place. I noticed, too, the quaint, carved box 
beneath his arm. 

He had been absent since the early morn- 
ing; but I had come to learn that there were 
times he would rather be alone and so we 
came and went as fancy moved us and apart. 

Through half open eyes I saw him 
sit there on the grass and fondle 
the treasure box, as he was wont 
to do. I saw him open it and stroke the shin- 
ing vials. I saw him lift one high toward the 
sunbeams as they came filtering down through 
the leaves above, that he might gaze again at 
his fancied potent liquid. And then 

The cry I heard drowned the murmur of the 
water and the drumming in the far away 
wood. The cricket ceased to chirp. 

When I reached his side he sat there quiv- 
ering, all life gone from his face; all horror 
shining in his eyes. 

He did not speak to me, but over and over I 
heard him whispering to himself — ‘‘Death! 
death! death!” 


54 THE HILLS OF TENNESSEE. 

The vial still trembled in his palsied hand. 
Instinctively I saw the seal was broken. Some 
inkling of the truth came to me. Had he 
given her 

He seemed to: know at last that I was there 
— to read my thoughts. 

“I would have had her live on with me for- 
ever,” he moaned. “She did not know! Some 
simple ailment troubled her. She let me min- 
ister. In my longing to give her of my life — 
My God, man! Don’t you see? Don’t you 
understand? The wrong vial!” 

He sprang to his feet and cried it at me like 
a soul possessed. 

“Two hours ago! Two little, worthless 
hours in all the time that could have been 
to her and me! Why don’t you go to her? 
Can’t you, with all your science, save her?” 

He laughed and my blood stood still to 
listen. 

“Ha, ha! Save her? No power in heaven 
or earth can save her now. 

Upon the instant the fatal vial was at his 
lips. I dashed it from his hand and far down 
the rocks below I saw it strike and shatter. 

By her humble bed I labored with all the 
skill at my command. Night and day was I 
there; watching the fatal malady draw close 
about the slender thread of life the folds that 
baffled all my cunning. Patiently she bore it 
all and when I went to the cabin up the slope 
the lonely occupant waited hopelessly for en- 
couragement he knew would never come. 
Stripped of his strange delusions, love for her 
had supplanted all else in his heart and soul. 

And she — her great, tender eyes would fol- 
low me about the room, and when I sat beside 
her bed her hand stole out to mine and pressed 
it, oh, so tenderly, and when I put it down 
upon her breast it was so cold. 

He knew when I went back to him that day 
that all was over. But he has never known 
what I saw in those tender eyes before they 
closed forever. Silently she gave me what I 
had never dreamed worth the seeking — the 
love she never could have given him. 


THE HILLS OF TENNESSEE. 


55 


He is still there by that grave in the granite 
hills of Tennessee. His letter is here before 
me now — an invitation for another fortnight — 
“or as long as you will.” I can’t spare the 
time for a vacation now; but I’ll send some 
flowers for a grass grown mound up in the 
hills of Tennessee. 


INTERRUPTION IN IDLENESS 


HE iron steamboat for Coney Island 
touched at the Crescent club pier, 
half a dozen young men leaped from 
the rail, the bell rang in the 
engine room, and the boat was off 
on its interrupted way to the democratic 
merry-go-round on the beach. Joseph Bert- 
ram sat on the wide veranda of the club 
house and watched the men as they walked 
rapidly up the pier. He wondered why people 
would be so foolish as to exert themselves un- 
necessarily. Bertram was noted for absten- 
tion from this kind of folly. There were sev- 
eral other kinds, however, for which he did 
not have so great dislike. The new comers 
were active, vigorous and enthusiastic. Bert- 
ram had as great antipathy to continuous 
enthusiasm as he had to unnecessary activity. 
He did not see why a man should be en- 
thusiastic over a good cigar, a golf stick, or 
a racing shell, or a boxing glove, or a fencing 
foil, or a bicycle tire. Such folly was a need- 
less exhaustion of energy which should be re- 
served for a worthy occasion. But Bertram 
would never tell his friends what such an 
occasion was. So he got the reputation of 
being indolent and indifferent, a reputation 
as undeserved as any which even the most 
lazy man who worked ten hours a day ever 
acquired for industry. The active young men 
who had got off the boat had little respect for 
him. They were working that at some future 
time they might be lazy. He did not have to 
work. His ancestors had accumulated enough 
money to make it possible for their descend- 
ants to follow the bent of their inclination. 
Bertram was considerate, however, and he 
seldom told the men who made good natured 
sport of him what he actually thought and 
why he loafed and invited the waiter to fill 
his glass. When Williams, the first man to 
reach the club house, remarked, “You are 
working as hard as usual, I see?” he smiled 
good naturedly and nodded his head. It was 



INTERRUPTION IN IDLENESS. 57 


easier to nod than to open his mouth and use 
his vocal organs. The men sat on the porch 
near him, and after resting their eyes and 
their brains by gazing in silence for a minute 
or two at the glowing sky in the west and the 
trail of gold and crimson light that led from 
the beach at their feet across the waters to 
the distant horizon and the gates of heaven, 
they began to talk of their coming vacation. 
One was going to make a bicycle tour; another 
intended to charter a canal boat, fit it up with 
cots and rugs and cool hangings and take a 
trip on the Delaware and Hudson canal 
through the mountains of Ulster, Sullivan and 
Orange counties; a third thought of going to 
Europe to amuse himself in the places that 
had known men for thousands of vears. He 
preferred the haunts of the swallow-tailed coat 
to the lair of the honey bee and the nesting 
place of the robbin. Bertram listened to the 
animated conversation for several minutes. 
Then he slowly turned in his chair and re- 
marked in his usual lifeless way; 

“Boys, I have concluded to take a vaca- 
tion this year as well as the rest of you.” . 

The laughter which followed this announce- 
ment echoed through the house and made the 
idler about the tennis court in the rear won- 
der who had brought a new story across the 
bay from the dusty city. 

“You may laugh if you choose,” he said, 
“but I think you might better save your 
strength for business to-morrow. It is a 
useless waste of energy. I repeat, though that 
is unnecessary, that I propose to take a vaca- 
tion. If your minds were not running in 
ruts all of the time you would follow my 
meaning instead of keeping to one track like 
a stupid trolley car. What is a vacation? 
It is an intermission in a stated employment 
or procedure. I am going to take a vacation. 
That makes the third time I have said it. 
I am as much entitled to it as any of you.’ 

After this speech of unusual length for 
him, he rose slowly from his chair and stroll- 
ed, into the building. That was the last seen 
of him that night or for many days. Nobody 
knew where he had gone. He left no word 


58 INTERRUPTION IN IDLENESS. 

about tbe time when he would return. The 
men who spent their evenings at the house 
missed him. It is true he did not talk much, 
but he gave the others some amusement by 
his good natured inaction. They made fun 
of him when they felt blue and disgusted 
and sometimes they would get cynical as 
they thought of him spending his days there 
while they were rushing about the courts 
cr muddling their brains with figures or try- 
ing to decide whether they ought to buy or 
sell the securities of the Consolidated Pneu- 
matic Stock Watering company, limited. 
A week passed and he did not return. But 
early in the second week he was found in his 
accustomed place on the porch watching the 
shipping on the bay and sipping mineral wa- 
ters stiffened up occasionally with a little 
brandy. Everyone was glad to see him 
again and had a word of pleasant banter to 
offer. He took it all good naturedly — it would 
have been too much trouble to resent any- 
thing of so trivial a nature. He offered no 
word of explanation of his absence. The 
men to whom he had announced his inten- 
tion of taking a vacation had not thought to 
speak of it again and until they arrived on 
the iron steamboat as usual, everyone was 
wondering why he had been absent. If he 
had been an ordinary man no curiosity 
would have been excited. As Williams and 
his companions approached the house that 
evening and saw Bertram on the porch the 
conversation of the previous week cam‘e back 
to them and Williams exclaimed: 

“Hello, Bertram is back from his vaca- 
tion.” 

When they reached him they began to ask 
him what sort of a time he had, where he 
went, what he saw, what he did and why he 
did not let them know where he was going. 
He looked up at them and smiled indulgent- 
ly. 

“Well, the truth is,” said he, “I wanted 
to be alone and I succeeded. I am glad to 
get back, though. Everybody is glad when 
his vacation ends, isn’t he, Crowden?” 


INTERRUPTION IN IDLENESS. 59 

This remark was addressed to a man who 
had announced with considerable enthusiasm 
the year before that he was going to ride to 
Buffalo and back on his bicycle. It rained 
every day while he was -away, and the roads 
were so muddy that he could not ride, so 
he spent his vacation in a little hotel at 
Flshkill rather than come back and admit 
that he had not succeeded in what he under- 
took. 

“Where did I go?” he continued. “Not 
very far away. If you fellows would only 
try to find amusement and relaxation near 
home you would get rich sooner and learn 
many things about the world which you do 
not know. I don’t know whether my vaca- 
tion did me any good or not. I feel inclined 
to talk a little to-night because of it, and 
talking is a waste of good breath which 
might be used in expanding the lungs or in 
inhaling the smoke of a good cigar. Where 
did I go? Oh, haven’t I told you yet? Well, 

I visited that unknown territory that lies be- 
tween Ridgewood and Richmond Hill. I 
know every paving stone between the car 
tracks and every tree and every house on 
each side of the road. There are some fine 
trees there. I spent my vacation as the con- 
ductor of a trolley car collecting the toll 
which one set of men levies on another for 
carrying them where they want to go. I 
learned that there were more kinds of fools 
in this world than Commodore Vanderbilt 
ever dreamed of when he was talking of one 
of his sons-in-law. I shall not go into de- 
tails,” he hastened to add, as some one ask- 
ed him to tell about the fools. “I found 
out too, that the people who ride on the sub- 
urban trolley cars belong to the same race 
as those Who ride in carriages; of another 
kind. You wanted me to give you a lecture 
on the foods I have met. I did not want to 
be personal so I decilined. I shall not talk 
sociology or socialism either. I have told 
you what I did. I will bet the price of a 
box of cigarettes that I had just as much 
fun as any of you fellows will have this sum- 


60 INTERRUPTION IN IDLENESS. 


mer and I know that it was a vacation be- 
cause it was a serious interruption to my 
stated occupation. Interruptions cause fric- 
tion and friction wears a man out. I do not 
propose to be interrupted in that way again. 
As you have seemed interested in my return 
I shall show how I appreciate yoair atten- 
tions. My new yacht willl be compdeted on 
the fourth of July and I now invite you all 
— let me see, there are not more than a doz- 
en of you here now are there? the yacht is 
big enough for that number — to come along 
with me and have a good time. My crew is 
large enough, so that not one of you "will 
have to exert himself unnecessarily and if 
any of you want it I will have a suction 
pump adjusted near you so that you will 
not have to use any of your own breath in 
smoking your cigars.” 


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